I remember looking at daggerheart and there was something like 18 playable races at the beggining and I cant help but think that is a lot dnd and pathfinder are in the same boat with a large amount of playable races. Wouldnt a smaller amount be better for gms and players that way they dont have to learn about all these different races and how they fit in the world.
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When you can't name them all from memory (including what makes each mechanically distinctive) it's too many. For most people this puts the upper limit somewhere between 2 and 20.
>mechanically distinctive)
this has always been a problem for me, all the fantasy races don't feel unfamiliar enough. a dwarf is just a short guy with a beard and a pension for alcoholism while an elf is some ageless dude who likes magics and being a pretentious twat. I want something strange like a race of sentient vending machines that dish out random items and spells of a bizarre nature.
Dwarves and Elves are races that people are already familiar with and can "click" with immediately. A race of sentient vending machines will take a lot more exposition on your part for people to want to approach them.
>I want something strange like a race of sentient vending machines that dish out random items and spells of a bizarre nature.
Make it. Lets see what you can do with a race such as that.
Japan is, as usual, way ahead of us when it comes to such weird shit.
I can agree I think the differences between different races should be like the differences between humans, ogryn, and ratlings in 40k. No human will ever be stronger than an ogryn, period. Even if you are a genetic freak who trained every day with a perfectly cultivated diet Ogryn will treat you like a small child with how small and weak you are, at the same time the smartest Ogryn after having brain surgery to improve his intelligence further is illiterate except he can remember the first letter of his name and write said letter.
That’s how I think races should behave, mechanically an elf should be so dextrous an olympic gymnast looks like they’re stumbling around drunkenly and a dwarf should be wondering why their human friend is convulsing after being bitten by a tiny black and red spider. On the other hand the elf needs that dexterity bexause even landing on the wrong foot can cause them to break their ankle and the dwarf less runs than waddles towards his enemies.
My counterpoint is that while yes, you get clear differences with the way you proposed that I would think would be how they would play out in reality, but the differences are also extremely pronounced so that it's practically night and day with the differences. Why play as a human melee attacker when an ogryn is going to be leagues better? By keeping the differences toned down while still addressing their core differences, both the ogryn and the human melee attackers are both still viable and competitive. The human melee attacker strategizes, while the ogryn is direct and lacking in thought.
>I want something strange
The vast majority of people do not.
I disagree, you haven't even made a proper game unless you have at LEAST 400 different races.
If you want them to be clearly mechanically distinct, I think the maximum should sit around 5-6. Beyond that, I feel race choices (or whatever you might use instead in a single race game) start to get either samey or into the stupid gimmick race territory.
"Classic" races already feel samey.
At least Humans, Dwarves and Halflings.
Elves tend to have bullshit long lore and traits even if they're just pointy humans most of the time.
Gnomes are either a mix of halfling and dwarf, or short elves.
I agree. They can be made distinct, but I'll still maintain that it becomes a lot harder past 5 races.
1
think of it like a fighting game roster. what's wrong with smash, despite it having a million characters? like 60% are copy pastes or lack uniqueness. compare smash to say, guilty gear. roster is far smaller, but each individual character is wildly different and often interesting. if you're world building, focus on giving individual groups dickensian traits that help identify them, but flesh them out that their differences are felt by the players. rp goes along way here from the dm (too often the DM plays the samey bar tender/local lord/guard in the same voice and mannerisms)
Human elf dwarf and halfling
Anything more is superfluous
I have two settings I use, one for more traditional fantasy and one for weeb fantasy. The traditional fantasy setting takes those base four, adds Orc, Half-orc, and Half-elf. My weeb fantasy has Human, Dragon-person, and a sort of build your own stats system for Beast-people.
I'm in the same boat, but I also included Gnomes (interpreted more according to their roots as wise generous spirits of the earth who abhors when their gifts are taken for granted), and also Goblins because I have the races organized as pairs (sans Human which is baseline), and the Orc would have been without a partner.
Tryhard homosexuals who will never know the joy of playing a big guy race.
Anything other than human, elf, dwarf and hobbit is slop. Maybe a good player can get away with half orc or gnome, but it should not be encouraged.
>how many playable races is too many
There is no limit. You could have infinity playable races to choose from but you'll only ever have to deal with 1 per player at any given time.
Star Wars is the only setting I can think of off the top of my head that can get away with having hundreds of them to choose from.
Planescape? sort of justifies everything from anywhere in D&D multiverse
Aye, Planescape too, but I don't think their selection of viable playable races is nearly as broad as in Star Wars going by RAW
Yeah, or Star Trek or some other space opera setting. Having dozens of races is a lot more plausible when you can use as many planets as you need instead of having them all sharing one.
if the race exists in the setting the players should be allowed to choose it
Counterpoint is that letting players choose to play as that race also demystifies it and makes it out to be more mundane. If they're supposed to be fantastical and exotic, having one of them adventuring beside you won't make them so exotic.
Why wouldn't it be, just have them remain rare outside of the party. Maybe the PC hasn't even met another member of his race in years, maybe people constantly mistake him for some spooky folk creature because most people have no idea who he is. You can even sit down with him outside of the game and figure out something unique about his and culture that he alone is around to teach others about.
Those methods can work, too. As you implied, you gotta spell out what's what to them before they make the character.
I think The One Ring has pretty good idea where rarer races going on an adventure in the first place draws more attention and means that the agents of Mordor are going frick with the party sooner.
The Palladium approach.
Where there are almost 100 species listed as 'common' for north america alone.
I restrict my BFRPG game to the core four plus Canein, Half-Elf, Phaerimm and my own homebrew catfolk race.
>this 'race' is just a human with cat ears and a tail
wow I imagine how creative the other 17 must be.
I'll take three good and distinct races over 25 shitty cosplays any day.
The Katari are basically Khajiit. It's basically a race with a sliding scale from catboy to sentient lion.
that sounds like shit but I appreciate the implied possibility of catgirls or catboy twinks getting mounted by big lions
>How many are too many?
There's no upper limitation as long as you work the appropriate context for them. If you want a lot of different races within the confines of a small area you either need to define niches of specialisation occupied by each or the results of overlaps (eg: old d&d has human being the dominant ever expanding race because they can, more or less, adapt to the dwarves and elves niches in a shorter time frame). Smaller areas of interaction (eg: cosmopolitan settlements) come with other inherent issues the greatest of which is interbreeding: does interspecies mating produce fertile offsprings? If yes such areas would sooner or later produce a homogeneous populace sharing the traits of such crossovers, if not such areas tend to be either short lived (one of the races get the upper hand) or ending in a societal stratification much like a caste system but only if a symbiotic relationship is viable.
The moment furry races are included.
Human, elf, dwarf, no half-breeds (miscegenation is NOT ok) + non-playable monster races.
however many you want to put in your game
My rule:
Players my choose whatever race they want BUT the party should not contain members from more than 2 different races (counting sub species).
Examples:
>humans + dwarves
ok
>humans + elves
ok
>dwarves + elves
ok
>sentient vending machines + orcs
ok
>lizardmen + tieflin
ok
>humans + elves + dwarves
not ok
This is not a bad rule but I feel you should be open to including one additional mascot character in any otherwise dyad party. Like:
>humans + dwarves, + one single ogre
>sentient vending machines + orcs, + a halfling
nah. Better have a rarity system where humans are -1, then halflings, dwarves and half-elves are +0, elves are +1, and any more exotic races are +2. Total sum must be 0 or less.
I allow that for parties of five or more players, but I run usually for 3-4 players.
meant for
not for me, I feel 2 races make for "believable" groups. One extra race (3 total) for big groups (as mentioned on previous quotes) are more than enough.
>precludes the most classic set up of humans with one dwarf and one elf
Total failure at the very first hurdle.
Nah, my approach has worked wonders over the years. There can be a single member of a third race if the group is 5 or more players. Also, I don't use alignments, I just ask the players to act like normal people, there's no acting like a psycho at my table. Also, if playing d&d-likes: no bards.
Ooooh, your games only exist in your head. That makes so much more sense now.
Nah, been playing since 2001 (with a break from 2016 to 2020). Try it, might work for your group.
I use a similar approach as in the party should always be at least 60% humans (round up) and have demihumans as iconic (as in no more than one each) save for very specific bg reasons (eg: two players want to make a pair of siblings).
Honestly I think you should have around 5. so that every race can be tied to the world in a meaningful way
>how many playable races is too many
Four hundred eighty six thousand nine hundred twenty-one. Also probably a smaller number than that, but, certainly that many is too many.
Took best post a while, but it got here.
Playable races should make sense to the setting. If you're playing Mausritter, you shouldn't expect to see Martians, as an example.
wow so insightful
the fact that this explicitly needs to be spelled out says a lot about the state of modern traditional "games"
>races
The game is already unplayable.
I have two option.
Either a limited selection benefitting the themes of the setting.
Or all of them, and D&D is a game which doesn't benefit from a limited selection.
8 seems to be the sweet spot. Enough to make the world feel "fantasy" but limited enough to feel "realistic".
more than 5 is too much
you don't even need more than 1
Emergent worldbuilding.
Only work the races your players choose into your setting (as well as the ones you need for your campaign) and only do the bare minimum. Let them do the work for the stuff you don't care about.
this seems like a great place to ask so is there a vanilla player race that has a snake tail instead of legs? yuanti don't seem to, salamander doesn't look playable and the player race in 4e has legs.
5 per continent, usually with the following layout:
>short and skinny
>short and broad
>normal
>tall and skinny
>tall and broad
This guy has the right idea, you need a limited number of local creature types so that everyone can wrap their heads around the local setting, but the PCs can play any weird shit they want and just be from somewhere else.
i dont think its a big problem. almost every edition of dnd after 2nd has had like 50+ playable races spread across their splatbooks.
it is, in my opinion, best to do it that way though. have like a "core 10" or something, and then introduce regional or themed splatbooks or card packs with additional playable races.
alternatively, have zero playable races, and instead have a race builder. there is a generic 6-10 page pool of traits and flaws, a bit like feats or backgrounds in dnd. pick 2 of each and create your own playable race (this might be the job of the DM to create a set of premade playable races for the players if they want to be specific with their setting). then players could even share their race builds on forums/discord/character builder app of some kind
i like that idea more, but its more work for the designers and the players and can feel a bit less nailed down on the traditional tropes, for better or worse.
or the third route (which i personally dont like), that races are purely cosmetic and have no bearing on the rules of the game. each gets a little lore blurb but thats it. easier on the designers and players, and perfectly balanced, but bland and missing the race fantasy vibes. still since its so easy to design for, this method you could easily have 100 races with pretty minimal impact, especially if the lore section for each is only like a paragraph.
Depends on the setting.
Starwars FFG RPG has 20+ races and it works fine.
>learn about all these different races and how they fit in the world
Modern players just treat races like skins for humans, they are incapable of roleplaying an elf that is 300 years of age or a dwarf that's highly race conscious and will do everything for his race and tribe. The classical 4 are more than enough for normal fantasy imo.
I'm glad most of you stick to your own groups and don't bleed into public games; your games sound incredibly boring and bland.
post your campaign overview
When it comes to playable races, there's no such thing as too much or too little.
If you have many races yet in the end it seems like only one or two of them actually matter to the setting and it's not setting up for the extra races to take over or finally do something meaningful.